Published 2 February 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b414
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b414

News

Number of breast cancer cases detected by screening has doubled in a decade in England

Susan Mayor

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The routine breast screening programme in England is detecting twice as many cases of breast cancer each year as it did 10 years ago, the latest figures show.

A report from the NHS Information Centre says that the programme detected 14 110 cases of breast cancer in 2007-8, twice the number found in 1997-8, 6914 cases. More than three quarters (79%) of the cancers detected last year were invasive, and just over half of these (52%) were less than 15 mm in diameter and not detectable by hand.

The rise in the number of breast cancers detected by the NHS breast screening programme is likely to be a result of its being extended over the past few years to include older women. Before 2001 only women aged 50-64 years were eligible to participate in the programme, which invites women for screening every three years. It was then extended to include . . . [Full text of this article]


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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Enhanced detection or over-detection
Michael Baum
bmj.com, 6 Feb 2009 [Full text]
Doubling detection = doubling harm
Hazel Thornton
bmj.com, 6 Feb 2009 [Full text]
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